than of the last half of the century,
intensified perhaps that the passive voice was the strongest in him.
All the country knew that Canon Egremont could be relied on to give a
prudent, scholarly judgment, and to be kind and liberal, when once
induced to stir mind or body--but how to do that was the problem. He
had not been a young man at the time of his first marriage, and was
only a few years' junior to his brother, though he had the fresh,
wholesome look of a man who kept regular hours and lived much in the
air.

Alice knew him at once, and thought eighteen years had made little
change, as, at Nuttie's call to her, she looked from the window and saw
the handsome, dignified, gray-haired, close-shaven rosy face, and the
clerical garb unchanged in favour of long coats and high waistcoats.

The mother and daughter were exploring the house together. Mr.
Egremont had made it known that he preferred having his breakfast
alone, and not being disturbed in the forenoon. So the two ladies had
breakfasted together at nine, the earliest hour at which they could
prevail on the household to give them a meal. Indeed Nuttie had slept
till nearly that time, for between excitement and noise, her London
slumbers had been broken; and her endeavour to keep Micklethwayte hours
had resulted in a long, weary, hungry time in the sitting-room of the
hotel, with nothing to do, when the gaze from the window palled on her,
but to write to her aunt and Mary Nugent. The rest of the day had been
spent in driving about in a brougham with her mother shopping, and this
she could not but enjoy exceedingly, more than did the timid Mrs.
Egremont, who could not but feel herself weighted with responsibility;
and never having had to spend at the utmost more than ten pounds at a
time, felt bewildered at the cheques put into her hands, and then was
alarmed to find them melting away faster than she expected.

There was a very late dinner, after which Mr. Egremont, on the first
day, made his wife play bezique with him. She enjoyed it, as a tender
reminiscence of the yachting days; but Nuttie found herself de trop,
and was reduced to the book she had contrived to purchase on her
travels. The second night Mr. Egremont had picked up two friends, not
yet gone out of town, whose talk was of horses and of yachts, quite
incomprehensible to the ladies. They were very attentive to Mrs.
Egremont, whom they evidently admired, one so visibly as to call up a
blush